Artifact Details

Title

Catalog Number

Type

Date

2009-04-01

Contributor

Grier, David Alan, Interviewer

Johnson, Luanne, Editor

Toups, John, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Falls Church, Virginia

Extent

43 p.

Description

John Toups, the former CEO of Planning Research Corporation (PRC), describes his early career as a civil engineer which led him to form the consulting firm Toups Engineering, which consulted to local government and private real estate developers in Southern California on water and land use issues. In 1970, Toups Engineering was acquired by PRC and Toups continued to run it as an independent unit within the corporate structure until 1973 when he put in charge of all of PRC’s engineering companies.
In 1977 he was named President and CEO of PRC. He describes the multiple lines of business that PRC had been in as a result of multiple acquisitions and how, under his leadership, the company was restructured to be more focused, including an expansion of federal government business, and how their engineering work eventually was replaced by an emphasis on IT services. He describes the process of marketing to the federal government including PRC’s approach to bidding and preparing proposals and also describes some of the work that they undertook for governments in other countries. He talks about how PRC itself went through a series of acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s until it was acquired by Litton Industries which was subsequently acquired by Northrup Grumman.